Sant'Anna di Stazzema is a village in Italian Tuscany where, on August 12 1944, SS of 16. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Reichsführer-SS rounded up 560 villagers and refugees—men, women, children—and shot, then burned them.
The village was never rebuilt, and stands as a memorial. Until 2004, no one had ever been prosecuted for the massacre. In July 2004, a trial started before a military court in La Spezia against six former SS officers living in Germany.
In Italy, the massacre was not publicly known until 1994, when nearly 700 reports about it were accidentally found in a metal cabinet (named "cupboard of shame" by Italian media) in the basement of the Rome military court.
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